Harvard Sociologist to Present ‘Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City’ at Clark U

From Clark University:

WORCESTER, Mass.—Clark University will host Harvard sociologist and author Matthew Desmond for “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” a lecture on his latest book, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, November 30, in the Jefferson Academic Center, Room 320. The event is free and open to the public.

Desmond lived in a Milwaukee trailer park while doing research for “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” (2016); his book follows eight Milwaukee individuals and families and landlords swept up in the process of eviction. The book affirms the centrality of home, and offers new insights into the fundamental role housing plays in deepening equality in America. Desmond’s research argues that eviction is a cause, not a condition of poverty, and that the faces of America’s eviction epidemic belong to mothers and children.

Desmond is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and co-director of the Justice and Poverty Project. A former member of the Harvard Society of Fellows, he is the author of the award-winning book, “On the Fireline,” co-author of two books on race, and editor of a collection of studies on severe deprivation in America. His work has been supported by the Ford, Russell Sage, and National Science Foundations, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune. In 2015, Desmond was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” grant—making him one of 24 to receive a no-strings-attached fellowship of $625,000 over five years.

In his review published in The New York Review of Books, Jason DeParle writes that “Evicted” is “a gripping and important book” and “a stirring reminder that the US accepts as ordinary a depth of poverty that is extraordinary and cruel.”

This event is part of the Higgins School of Humanities’ dialogue symposium, “Home (De)Constructed,” which explores what “home” truly means. It is co-sponsored by the Center for Gender, Race, and Area Studies; the Sociology Department; the Department of International Development, Community and Environment; Clark’s Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise; the Women's and Gender Studies Program and the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance. For more information, call 508-793-7549 or email HigginsSchool@clarku.edu.

Photo courtesy of Clark U (Photographed: Matthew Desmond by Michael Kienitz)